Why where the highway goes is important

Wednesday

Apr 24, 2013 at 7:30 AM

Route 34 once went up Chestnut Street

Dave Clarke

It’s interesting how things turned out, and even more interesting to find out how they would have turned out if one decision had had a different outcome.Chamber Executive Mark Mikenas called the other day about an item in last Wednesday’s 10, 25, 50, 75 and 100 years column.His attention was caught by the effort 75 years ago to keep Route 34 on Chestnut Street.As long as anyone here today can remember, Route 34 has gone from Tenney Street down Main and turned east at Second Street.Apparently, if a decision by state highway engineers in 1938 had gone the other way, today the four lane would be going down Vine Street, several blocks east of Main.An article in the Saturday, April 16, 1938 Star Courier reported “considerable discussion these days among businessmen of North Chestnut and West Second streets” that when a current road construction project on East Second Street was completed, the state route might be permanently located down Main Street and head eastward at the intersection with Second Street. An alternate plan was to follow Division Street east from Tenney to Vine Street and from Vine turn onto East Second. Third Street was apparently out of the question as a permanent route since it would pass the main entrance of Walworth. State engineers, the article said, avoided setting routes near factories where traffic would be heavy.“Owners of garages, the hotel, and restaurants on North Chestnut and West Second have interceded through the Chamber of Commerce and have visited Mayor M.A. Saunders and the district highway office at Dixon for retention of the route as laid out before construction work started on city streets. They have maintained that South Chestnut Street is the logical route inasmuch as the new brick paving was laid according to state specifications,” the article stated.Learning that early Route 34 went down Chestnut Street, which is and was then primarily residential to the south, prompts several observations. It is a much shorter distance from Tenney to Chestnut on Division, that from Tenney to Main, which may have been why the highway went that way in the first place.Route 34 on Chestnut placed downtown Kewanee’s main intersection at Chestnut and Second, conveniently beside the Parkside Hotel, rather than one block east at Tremont and Second where it later developed. Newsroom colleague Mike Berry said it may explain why there was more business growth on West Second and the appropriately named Commercial Street, including several gas stations, than on East Second east of Main. Keeping Route 34 on Chestnut would have continued to carry state highway traffic through two blocks in the heart of the business district rather than along the east side and away from it.As for the Division-Vine Street route which obviously was not chosen, another newsroom co-worker, Rocky Stuffelbeam, said his uncle once ran a gas station on the northeast corner of that intersection which later became Peyer Bookkeeping. It may have been the reason a site in a residential area was selected for a gas station in the first place. Filling station operators were listed as among those most involved in the Chestnut, Main, Vine debate in 1938.According to City Manager Kip Spear, East Division, South Vine from Division to East Second and East Prospect from Main to East streets are categorized today as Federal Aid to Urban streets, which makes then eligible for federal dollars. Spear said the major improvement on East Division completed last year was paid for, in part, by FAU funds. He said, however, the designation is based on traffic count rather than history.Spear also shared another little-known piece ot Kewanee Route 34 history involving what were once the “T” intersections of Route 34 at Tenney and Division and Main and Division before the four-lane and “S” curve. Apparently data has been found indicating that in the 1960s the state was considering a plan make Houle Avenue, at the top of the Tenney Street hill just south of Division, one way carrying northbound traffic east to Willard, then north to Division and Main. A southbound one way would carry Route 34 from Main onto Division and then to Tenney.As to how Route 78 played into all of this, I found a 1930 Standard Oil Illinois road map on one of my attic expeditions which showed Route 78 was under construction and not yet open between Kewanee and Annawan in 1930, but I imagine at some point in or around 1938 a state engineer saw how Main Street lined up directly with Route 78 and made for better overall traffic flow through the city with an intersection at Second Street.It seems having what became a major coast-to-coast U.S. highway beside the business district rather than in the middle of it worked out better for Kewanee in the long run. It brought traffic to the business district but didn’t clog things up by going directly through it, which would have been the case of local interests had been successful in keeping Route 34 on Chesnut Street.City Manager Spear said it has always been true that wherever you put a state highway, business follows.The fact that Kewanee is at the junction of two major highways — Routes 34 and 78 — has been, and continues to be, a factor in the growth of the community.